The Man Himself
by Arisuke
Summary: A one shot summary of who the man was in my previous story called 3 Years Exactly. I won't tell the name, but you can take a guess.


**Author's Note: I don't own Starcraft and its franchise, just this story. Please, I beg you all, read and review it.**

Starcraft

The Man Himself

A man was leading a company of people through some sort of ancient ruins. As long as he can remember, he had never been here before. In his hand, a detector, lend to him by the foundation, his supposedly current employer.

To tell the truth, he had never talked to any proper representatives from the foundation. The only person he talked to that represented the foundation was his old acquaintance, a grunt in the organisation.

The device was giving out a beeping sound. As he walked towards a particular place, the device beeped rapidly to point of his annoyance. Not only that, it was so damn loud to his ears.

_Or is it because of my hangover?_, he thought.

Another truth, he never actually read the instruction manual on how to use it as he was too damn drunk to do anything at that time. His second-in-command had to read it and by the time he was sober, his second taught him.

He came to a flat ground. Based on the rapid beeping, he knew it was this place that held something important to the foundation. He signalled his company and a few people quickly separated from the company. As they reach the flat ground, they began to scan the area.

Not all in his company were his men. Nearly a third was from the foundation. Some of them were engineers and some were excavation experts. After setting up a defence perimeter, he tried to sleep. As he was about to doze off, his communication link beeped. He cursed in frustration as he turned the link on.

"Yes?"

"Sir, I'm sorry to disturb, but we received a strange signal."

"What sort of signal?" he asked with an indifferent tone.

"A Psi signal, sir."

Now that got his attention, "A Psi signal?"

"Yes, in this part of the sector. Apparently it is coming from somewhere deep inside the Fringe Worlds. Should we check it out?"

"Did anyone notice it?"

"No, not yet anyway."

"Well, it is probably the Dominion playing with one of its toys."

"But the Dominion's influence doesn't extend this far."

"Nobody's influence extends there, a perfect choice to play around. Only mistakes and loudmouths made everyone notice it."

"Oh, okay."

He could hear his second was deliberating his explanation. "However, check for anything. I don't want trouble coming to me when I'm not part of it. And one more thing, check with our allies too."

"I got you, sir," said the second and the link was off.

He looked around. Seeing that everybody was doing their own business, he finally dozed off peacefully.

Someone called out to him and he woke up. He felt that he slept for ten minutes, but when he checked his chrono, it was already two hours.

_At least my head feel better_, he thought.

"Yes?" he asked, as he looked at the person who called him. It was an engineer.

"Sir, we found something buried deep into the ground," said the engineer.

"What is it?"

"I don't know sir, but I think it is another relic."

"How long do you need to dig it out?"

"With the equipment we brought and based on the soil, I estimate about four days to dig to the relic and another three to actually take it out."

"Seven days, huh? Then what are you waiting for? Go to work."

"Yes, sir."

The next day, he was about to sip his drink when his communication link beeped.

"Are you trying to drink again, sir?" asked his second.

"Does it matter if I am?"

"You are still on the job, sir. Shouldn't you concentrate on that first?"

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you," he said as closed his bottle. "Is there anything wrong?"

"I had just finished analyzing the signal."

"You wasted your time checking on a Dominion signal?"

"I know it is ridiculous, but it was bothering me. The result showed that it is definitely not a Dominion made signal."

"If it wasn't the Dominion, who made it?"

"As you know, Mengsk had to recreate the emitter. So the resonance of a Dominion emitter is similar to Confederate ones, but it is slightly different. So the signal that we received was from a Confederate emitter."

"A Confederate signal. Hard to believe that someone still can get their hands on it. Still, whoever it is, that person must be stupid to activate it."

"Anyway, I'll be on a lookout for Dominion and Zerg activities."

A few hours later, his second called him again.

"Sir, I had received a report from one of our allies that the Dominion and Zerg are moving towards the source of the signal."

"Does our ally know where they are going?"

"It seems that both Dominion and Zerg also don't know where the signal came from. What shall we do, sir?"

"Wait and see."

"Sir?"

"Let the two big kids fight it out and enjoy the show. Whoever the Dominion lose, I'll be glad the Zerg did it for me. At the same time, I just want to see the Zerg die too. Let them die for all I care."

"What about the signal?"

"Calculate the possibilities and check it out. If you can't, just wait for the winner to lead you to the destination."

"Yes, sir."

2133 hours, 8th day, aboard the battlecruiser.

"So how is the retrieval?" asked the second.

"Tedious. How's your trip?"

"The signal came from a planet called Avictus III."

"What's wrong? You looked disturbed."

"May I talk to you privately, sir?"

"Okay. We'll talk in my quarters," he said.

They went into the room and sat down. He sat behind his desk, facing his second.

"There were an intense fighting between the Dominion and the Zerg in a Fringe System just next to the system Avictus III belongs to. The aliens opened up a warp rift and we followed their trail. As you know, the Zerg's warp rifts are much faster than ours. When we got there twelve hours later, the Zerg had already left the system," the second said.

He paused to take a breather and continued, "We investigated the surface and found a battlefield. I tell you man, it was messy. There were a lot of dead Zerglings around and inside a base. Among the dead are the human soldiers."

"Are they experiments?"

"No, they bare the mark of United Earth Directorate."

"UED survivors? But all of them are located mostly in the Core Worlds. In the previous conflict, they never made a base anywhere in the Fringe Worlds."

"Maybe you can get the answers out of this," said the second as he took out a charred datapad. "The 'pad is unusable, but the chip is in a fine condition. I hope it is still working."

"Where you get this?" he asked as he took the datapad.

"From a UED Marine. Specifically a First Sergeant. We found him in the base's compound, half buried in the rubble. We found eighteen other UED soldiers around the base and one, a dropship pilot I think, I assume was in the wreckage about five hundred meters from the base. I don't know if there were others inside the base."

"Was the pilot trying to escape?"

"Based on how it landed, I don't think so. It looks like the pilot sacrificed himself and the ship to even the odds."

"They got a ship, so why didn't they escape?"

"Dropships are not designed for long term space travel. Besides, they don't have warp drive. They can't really go home to Earth in that thing."

"I know that. What I meant was, why didn't they join a faction?"

"Maybe they still believed in the UED."

Hearing that, he went into a deep thought. "Belief. It was good thing, isn't it? Until the government betrays you." He looked at the datapad and turned to his second. "Is that all?"

"It is, sir."

"Alright, let's hurry things up. The faster we get the things in, the faster we could go home."

"Yes, sir."

**What do think about this story? Please read and review. Take a guess of who this man is and give your answer in your reviews.**


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